At Home With Will Shakespeare

★★★★★      Sans nothing

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33): Tue 20 – Mon 26 Aug 2024
Review by Rebecca Mahar

It’s a popular image of Shakespeare: the great Bard, bent over his desk, quill flying over parchment as he composes some of the greatest drama ever put on the stage.

But in At Home With Will Shakespeare, Pip Utton’s Shakespeare does not write freely; he agonizes, crumpling his papers and clutching his head as his audience files in. He is struggling to write, we will soon learn, one of his greatest hits, but there’s a knocking in his head that will be never at quiet.

Pip Utton is At Home With Will Shakespeare. Pic: Supplied.

Shakespeare aficionados will recognise the reference, and indeed it’s the first of many as Utton begins to talk his way through Shakespeare’s life. Weaving in many of his famous quotes and speeches, either as simply part of the dialogue, or as responses to things that have happened to Shakespeare— things that, perhaps, inspired him to write.

There’s a lot we don’t know about Shakespeare and his life, which Utton freely admits and demonstrates, pointing out that we don’t really even know what Shakespeare looked like (which is convenient for actors trying to portray him).

As Shakespeare telling us about his life, Utton’s version is as true as anyone else’s. Though, he says, he’s “never been all that bothered about the truth. All that matters is what you hear, here,” he gestures to his ears, “and what happens in between.”

captivating

There is at the same time very little and a great deal of audience participation in this show: Utton occasionally interacts directly with an audience member, though never holding them in the spotlight too long, but is always speaking directly in a way that is captivating without being confronting.

He speaks to the audience rather than at them, inviting them into his world; baring Shakespeare’s soul in a way only direct address can accomplish.

The range Utton demonstrates in his hour At Home With Will Shakespeare is exceptional, and he flits seamlessly from casual speech to heightened verse, telling stories about his time in London, how he wrote his plays, singing a beautiful song only to reveal that “bloody Ben Jonson wrote that”.

But it is in Shakespeare’s recounting of the death of his son Hamnet that Utton truly shines, endowing his folded up cloak with the life —and mortality— of a young boy. The audience holds its breath, but for those who are weeping.

Pip Utton. Pic: Supplied.

Now I must break one of my editor’s rules (but that’s what those are for, right?) and speak in my own voice. It’s me (hi, I’m the problem—); I’m one of those people mouthing along to the words at a Shakespeare play. I’m one of the ones counting all 122,345 commas— and appreciating every one, thanks very much.

I’m also not that bothered about the truth when it comes to Shakespeare; he never let it get in the way of a good story, so why should I, even as I pick apart every fibre of one of his histories in my doctoral research?

What does it matter who wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays? We’ll never know for sure. I choose to believe in the idea of Shakespeare, one mortal man who managed to package so much humanity into so little time, and such extraordinary words.

Written by Utton himself (and Will, of course) and directed by Nicola Fleming, At Home With Will Shakespeare makes me want to believe, makes me imagine the man as he might have been; brilliant, broken, sometimes drunk, a bit petty, a poet, unfaithful, and above all, just a man. Such stuff as dreams are made on, that any of us could be, under the right circumstances and twists of fate.

Then again, it might all be a pack of lies. As Shakespeare tells his audience, he “could tell you anything I like— and it could just be true.” And isn’t that the point?

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to aery nothing
A local habitation and a name.               MSND, 5.1

Running time: One hour (no interval)
Pleasance Courtyard (The Green), 60 Pleasance EH8 9TJ (Venue 33)
Tuesday 20 – Monday 26 August 2024
Daily: 1.10pm
Details and tickets at: Book here

Website: https://putco.uk

Tags: #EdFringe, #EdFringe2024, At Home With Will Shakespeare, EdFringe 2024, Nicola Fleming, Pip Utton, Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance venues, Rebecca Mahar, Review, Shakespeare, Theatre